March is restaurant month in Portland.

About 30 restaurants are participating in the Portland area. Participating restaurants offer 3 courses for 33 dollars.We started at Nel Centro in the Hotel Modera .  Nel Centro doesn’t disappoint. On our last trip we started there as well. There seems to be a prejudice against hotel restaurants; there shouldn’t be. This is the real deal in Mediterranean food.

By the way the bread at Nel Centro is incredible. You are served a basket of bread to accompany your dinner. For your first course, you had a choice of either mesclun greens with fresh herbs and croutons or cream of cauliflower and fennel soup. Both were delicious. Our second course was artichoke cappellacci with lemon butter, pine nuts, and fresh herbs. The other entree course was rotisserie chicken with carrots, purple potatoes and tarragon. We are pescatarians so even though the chicken sounded delicious which I am sure it was we had the cappellacci. I never had cappellacci before, according to Epicurious, “it is little hat pasta, a classic dish in Ferrara.” The choices for your third course were lemon olive oil cake with strawberry compote and candied basil or house made ice cream or sorbet. We choose the ice cream a chocolate sea salt and the sorbet.(check photo as to which type)